Stringtopia and other things

At the very last minute I ended up going to Stringtopia.  I haven't blogged it yet, mostly because I didn't bring my camera (it's a DSLR and I didn't want to have to worry about where it was all the time).  But also because I just didn't have the words for it.

Life has been really hard the past few months and I have had a hard time talking about it.  Rob is still not working a regular job.  He's been subbing for someone who is out on extended medical leave, for we don't know how long, without benefits and the agency takes a huge chunk of his income.  And I got a virus which turned in to pneumonia and camped out in my lungs for several months.  And the girls have been particularly challenging and hard to be around.  (We just figured out why, and that's the most I'm going to post about that on the internet, but you can probably figure it out.  Both of them.)  And some other stuff I won't bore you with, but there was/is a lot of it.

Plus I just had a 40th birthday which was hard.  And it may have been really the other stuff that was hard but I was channeling it all into birthday feelings, which is probably more accurate. 

So less than a week before Stringtopia while I was moping about it Sarah said I should try to go.  I really thought it was all sold out and I couldn't afford it anyway, but it turned out it wasn't, and then Janet said I could share her room because she's awesome like that (and also maybe because I made her socks- it's definitely good karma, anyway).

So just like that, I was going.  It was awesome and overwhelming, and I cried over lunch (but not really over lunch) and completely embarrassed myself.  I must have some kind of breakdown at all major fiber events, apparently. I met and ate meals with Sandi Wiseheart (yes That Sandi Wiseheart) which was so cool, and she turns out to be just as charming and awesome as she is online, and didn't freak out too much when I started to cry over lunch, and made let me wear her crown because it was my birthday. 

I won some pretty sweet door prizes, including this gorgeous merino silk bamboo from Miss Babbs

Also a cool pocket knife/scissors thing from Abby's husband, which I don't have a picture of, but it's cool.

And I bought one tiny Abby Batt

 

Which is YUMMY and totally my color.

I had really wanted to take Abby's class, but that class was sold out a long time ago, so instead I got to be in Jacey's class, which was totally just what I needed.

Jacey Boggs is a rather brilliant spinner and all around awesome.  I have never really been very interested in spinning "art" yarns, but she has maybe convinced me that textured yarns are pretty cool.

(Pictures of Jacey and Jacey's yarn stolen with permission from Melissa's blog.  She has many more good pictures of Stringtopia here and here.)

Here's what I ended up with at the end of class

Kind of a hot mess with a few good coils in it.  It's hard, harder than I thought it would be to get my hands to do all those new things at once.  But I went home and practiced all week and got this

 

Which is actually pretty good.

 

 
























I am pretty pleased with myself.  Coils!  I made them.